INTERNATIONAL CONSOLIDATION 203 



culture was greatly improved and performed with complex 

 labor-saving machinery, created by tremendous mechanical 

 progress of last century, it practically ceased to be a part of 

 agriculture. Thus, the agricultural industry of past genera- 

 tions has been divided and sub-divided into a great number 

 of processes, which practically became separate industries, 

 having been removed from all connections with the farm. 



Carding, weaving, spinning, knitting, cloth making, skim- 

 ming (skimming stations), churning (creameries), butter 

 making, cheese making, cotton ginning, rice hulling, thresh- 

 ing, manufacture of agricultural implements, etc., all of these 

 have left the farm more or less long ago and are concentrated 

 in the factories. Beet sugar and meat packing industries rep- 

 resent especially a whole class of industries that grew up out 

 of olden, original agriculture. 



Thus we see that universal law of economic evolution, the 

 law of differentiation and specialization with incident concen- 

 tration, affected also the field of agriculture. The farmer of 

 olden times, who was a general producer, whose income was 

 always in direct proportion with his exertions (unless af- 

 fected by natural calamities), has become to-day a specialist. 

 As a specialist he is working within one little and narrow 

 field, he is left to perform the most difficult and disagreeable 

 processes, he is producing for sale instead of creating the 

 wealth, as before, for his own benefit. To tell it shortly, the 

 farmer has actually become a part of the competitive system. 

 His customer is not some individual as heretofore desiring 

 some article to be created for his use, but the great, imper- 

 sonal, competitive world market. This fact of tremendous 

 importance is almost invariably overlooked, not only by the 

 farmer himself in reasoning about his own economic condi- 

 tion, but even by almost every writer discussing the problems 

 of agriculture. 



The size of the market reached by each farm has grown 

 gradually and continually larger until the American farm, 

 some time ago, an almost isolated industrial unit, met face 

 to face with the world market. Just a few generations ago 

 the American farmer made everything he needed upon his 

 fwn farm and consequently cared nothing or little for what 



